Nintendo 3DS and PSP2 are the last of a dying breed

The Nin­tendo 3DS

Con­ver­gence. You gotta love con­ver­gence. Many device types have van­ished in the name of con­ver­gence. One such device that comes to mind is the Per­sonal Dig­i­tal Assis­tant or sim­ply the PDA. Many believed these devices were the future. I was one  of those peo­ple. I’ve owned sev­eral PDAs in my time but they are all gone now. They have been swal­lowed up but the smart­phone jug­ger­naut. To call the smart­phone a jug­ger­naut may be an under­state­ment, the smart­phone is tak­ing over. Point and shoot cam­eras, hand­held video game con­soles and more recently even lap­tops are not safe. Just look at the Motorola Atrix! A dual core mon­ster phone that can dou­ble as a net­book! Con­ver­gence couldn’t be more appar­ent than with hand­held con­soles right now.

The Sony Eric­s­son XPERIA Play, twin of the PSP

The Sony Eric­s­son XPERIA Play is just the exam­ple. It’s an Android smart­phone pack­ing a slide out gamepad, sim­i­lar to the one found on a PSP Go. It is appar­ent to me that this is the direc­tion Sony is going to go from here on.

The Go is going to go the way of the dodo. The 3DS too. But that just ruins my rhyme :-p

The Nin­tendo 3DS has some­thing unique in its 3D dis­play. In the com­ing year, I bet there will be sev­eral phones announced with 3D dis­plays — pos­si­bly even bet­ter than the one on the 3DS.

With the sheer size rate of growth of the Android mar­ket and the Apple App Store, peo­ple will expect more out of the PSP2 and the Nin­tendo 3DS — and more they will not get. It is there­fore appar­ent that this is the end of the line for ded­i­cated mobile con­soles. In fact, it sur­prises me that they even both­ered. At least Sony seems to have a plan for the PSP line, I won­der when the Nin­tendo Phone coming?